Every year on the 8th of September, UNESCO invites the entire world to celebrate the International Literature Day. This tradition that started in 1967 is done to increase awareness about the importance of literacy as the key to one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely Quality Education. Literacy is also a basic human right that is necessary to acquire knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills that we need to live.
Technology has grown at such a rapid pace that it allows us to increase our literacy skills by making reading materials more accessible. But this development also has the potential to be a challenge in the digital era, considering the huge quantity of available information. Therefore, digital literacy is a must and it’s mandatory that every individual has it to acquire and use every information correctly.
Aliya Zakiya, a class of 2021 undergraduate Communication Sciences student who usually goes by the name Ila, voiced her opinion regarding what she feels about the role of digital literacy. According to Ila, digital literacy is not just about “being able to use [digital media]” but it’s also about understanding, processing, and utilising a piece of content, information, or digital media in general in a wise, capable, and correct way. She said, “In the era we live in now, we’re always exposed to digital media. So much so that there’s a flood of information. Digital literacy can assist us in filtering which information is useful to us and which one we can trust.”
To this day, Ila has made articles about lifestyle or education. In doing so, she learns that it’s necessary to research before making content and to use relevant, accurate, and factual sources. It requires thoroughness and credible sources when delivering information in order to maintain the audience’s trust. To determine a source, Ila usually refers to trustworthy websites or institutions. Ila added that digital literacy is a much needed skill to successfully complete the process of making content.
Another perspective is provided by Defrio Saka Wahid or Rio, a class of 2022 undergraduate Communication Sciences student. He talked about how important it is to be literate in the digital era that is dominated by the tendency to acquire entertainment from contents in social media even though they’re usually low in quality and dangerous for the cognitive development of young people. He thinks that the culture of reading books needs to be brought back to replace that habit. But he also warned us about the literacy trend in one particular social media, TikTok, with the name of “BookTok” which he considers to be harmful because the trend tends to direct people to consume low quality literature, moreover, stuff that reeks of pornography. Which is why, similar to what Ila said, he stated that literacy is more than just reading but it’s also about filtering every received information.
He also talked about the danger of digital media for the livelihood of literature creators. Even though it’s good to have easy access to literature in the digital era, the massive amount of pirated versions of reading materials on the internet can also harm authors. Therefore, he hopes that the government will be more attentive to this issue because literacy is supposed to be a right that everyone has access to but it shouldn’t hurt the people who provide that knowledge in the process.
So let’s commemorate International Literacy Day by reminding ourselves and others to increase our literacy skills. This can be done by filtering every information we receive by getting used to looking for credible sources and by reading literature. Happy International Literacy Day! (Ed)